Art as advertised

For all you baby boomers that think that poster art got its start back in the ‘60s, turn off your black lights and head over to the Centerville Historic Museum.

Joe Burns

For all you baby boomers that think that poster art got its start back in the ‘60s, turn off your black lights and head over to the Centerville Historic Museum where a collection of posters from the first half of the 20th century is on exhibit.

Culled from the collection of Alfred Hoch, the exhibit is a sampling of work by some of the greatest illustrators of their time. Rockwell Kent, N.C. Wyeth, Howard Chandler Christy and Norman Rockwell were among those who created poster art. Rockwell’s distinctive style can be found on a poster advertising “Topics of the Day,” an early silent film newsreel. The illustration was originally found on a 1919 cover of Literary Digest.

“People would buy the product because of the illustrator,” says curator Edward Sullivan.

But images were equally important and a poster from the 1930s showing two Boy Scouts sharing a bottle of milk and a box of Kellogg’s Cornflakes put the Battle Creek cereal right up their with mom and apple pie.

Movies were coming into their own but still competing with the traveling circuses and road shows that continued to prosper in the early part of the 20th century. Barnum and Bailey, Sparks Circus and were touted in full color, as were films featuring the stars of the day such as Clara Bow.

The Montana Frank Shows was the best of both worlds, a screen version of the Wild West shows popularized by “Buffalo Bill” Cody and others. Another sort of wild West, was Hollywood sex symbol Mae West, who’s seen smiling seductively behind her fan, luring onlookers to see her in “It Ain’t No Sin.”

Patriotism is also on display. A 1917 Red Cross poster with its black border and dark image of a vulture, blood dripping from its beak, perched upon the skull of a dead soldier and underneath it the words: “This may be your boy” is a view of the horrors of war that many are sheltered from today.

Another wartime image on exhibit is one from World War II showing World Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis in full battle gear, his eyes riveted on an unseen target as he thrusts his bayonet forward. Surrounding him are the words “Pvt. Joe Louis says ‘we’re going to do out part … and we’ll win because we’re on God’s side.”

The show, which runs through September, shares space with an exhibit of Roaring 20s costumes.